Friday, May 24, 2013

The UAC (User Account Control) was introduced in Windows Vista as a protection against malicious programs, Trojans and other nasty applications from running without the user’s permission, and possibly causing harm to the system and user’s files. But the way it was implemented, it left users with few choices. Many decided to disable it because it got in their way far too often. The UAC in Windows 7 was improved and an ability to set different levels of protection was added, but it’s still not perfect. It has the annoying habit of popping up even when you are logged in as administrator.

Since disabling the UAC is not really recommend, we need a way to make certain applications bypass the UAC so that you can use these programs without lowering your protection. Here is how to do it.

Right-click on the Computer icon on the desktop or Start Menu and then click on “Manage”. This will open Computer Management.

Click on “Task Scheduler” on the left pane, and from right pane click on “Create task”.

Enter a name for the task, and at the bottom, check the box “Run with highest privilege”.

Now click on the Actions tab and then click New. Next to the Program/script field, click on browse and select the application that you want to bypass the UAC prompt. Click OK to create the task, and then close the Computer Management window.

Next, create a new shortcut on your desktop and in the window that opens, type in the following command:

schtasks.exe /run /tn "OSFMount"

Here “OSFMount” is the name of the task we created earlier. Click Next and then give the shortcut a new name that you can identify.

Now whenever you need to start this program, use this shortcut and you’ll not see the UAC prompt.

Repeat this process for every application that you want to bypass the UAC.